“You gave me back my trust in God and His Word!”

We constantly hear testimonies of how God is using AiG all over the world to encourage and equip believers to stand on the authority of God’s Word from the very beginning. Well, recently we received a particularly engaging email from a supporter named Willem in the Netherlands. I think you will find his testimony encouraging. I have incorporated some highlights below.

He wrote the following:

So here is my story. It's a story of how [I] drifted away from God and how God led me to your website and how your teachings eventually totally opened my eyes and made all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place. Your message is ‘bulls-eye’, so to speak; it's exactly the point and the way you presented it to me was exactly what I needed, because evolution used to be an enormous stumbling block for me.

Willem said he was raised in a Christian family and grew up believing that God’s Word was true, but very slowly his faith in God’s Word began to erode as he came up against people who would say things such as "well, the [Bible] story is true, but it didn't really happen.”

The Danger of Believing “Both Stories”

At his Christian school Willem was introduced to evolution and millions of years. He said he was confused because he knew that the Bible didn’t teach that worldview, but his teacher “didn't even mention how different this story was from the stories from the Bible that we’re told at the beginning of every day.” It was then that he realized “some Christians believe both stories, although they really cancel each other out.” Willem said as he grew older he continued learning about evolution and long ages in school, on TV, and in science magazines.

It made me more and more uncomfortable. Because they don't just tell a different story, they actually seem to have a lot of evidence for it too. So more and more doubt crept into my mind; am I really ignorant to believe God created everything in just a few days a few thousand years ago? . . . I tried to believe both, but every time the ten commandments were read in church and the passage “for in six days the Lord created the heavens and the Earth” came by, I couldn't help thinking “but if the Lord did NOT create the heavens and the Earth in six days, this commandment is simply wrong. Why would the other nine be true, why would anything the Bible teaches be true?” . . . Eventually I guess my faith just slipped through my fingers. The Bible should have been true, because the message is so awesome, but unfortunately it just isn't, whether we like it or not. I somehow got convinced that there is insurmountable evidence for evolution and it's better to just accept that, no matter how sad it is. So I did. I didn't have the “luxury” to believe in both stories; I'm not going to trust a book that's already misleading in the very first sentence, I'm not going to allow God to blame death on us when in reality there was death long before there were humans and so God's the one to blame, and why would I believe in Jesus? If evolution and millions of years is true, the gospel simply vaporizes. I had much more respect for bible believing Christians and for evolutionists than for Christians who also believe in evolution. The first are strong for believing something against all odds, the second are honest enough to accept reality as it is, but the last are just too scared to accept reality and on the way turn the beautiful God of the Bible into a monster of pain and suffering and death; a God I don't want to spend eternity with at all, not even a minute.

This young man’s struggle highlights the plight of many Christians who have sadly bought into the idea that science “proves” evolution and long ages. Science does no such thing! Evolution and millions of years are simply an interpretation of the evidence based on a naturalistic worldview. Evolution and the Bible are impossible to reconcile without doing great damage to the Bible’s history and authority. After all, if we can’t trust Genesis, then how can we trust anything that the Bible says?

The Evolutionary Worldview Is Meaningless

Well, Willem said he quickly became dissatisfied with evolution because he recognized it for what it really is—a hopeless, purposeless, meaningless religion:

But as I was trying to accept my new sense of reality, one thing continued to bother me. I noticed that although evolution is the truth, and so everything is ultimately without purpose and nothing really matters, virtually nobody lives their life accordingly.

He realized that, although evolutionists live like life has meaning, life has no meaning if we simply live and die and that’s it. Willem also said he recognized that there is no basis for morality in an evolutionary worldview. Without God and the Bible, there was no reason for him to live morally.

He wrote as follows:

If everybody wants me to believe in evolution, but nobody lives like evolution is true, then there's something really wrong. So I thought, “Well, I accepted evolution because of the insurmountable evidence for it, but something is still not right, so I'm going to examine this evidence myself so I cannot be fooled by anyone.”

God’s Word Can Be Trusted from the Beginning

It was then that God led him to Answers in Genesis. He began reading our articles and realized the difference between testable, repeatable observational science and untestable, unrepeatable, unobservable historical science. He shared the following:

I started with a google search, and found the website of Answers in Genesis and that changed everything! It took some time, but it was most definitely a big "eureka!" moment when I finally understood. The difference you pointed out between operational science and historical science was a real eye-opener. I never realized how much influence a worldview has on the conclusions that are drawn from the evidence until then. I found that there's no evidence for evolution at all, let alone insurmountable evidence.

He said he realized that “every evolutionary conclusion is ultimately based on the prior rejection of God's word”—it’s an interpretation of the evidence. It all depends on your worldview and your starting point: man’s ideas or God’s Word. Once he understood this, he realized that God’s Word can be trusted from the very beginning.

He stated the following:

You gave me back my trust in God and His Word! . . . I lost my faith in God for a while, but God never left me. He led me to you so you could remove the stumbling blocks that had been thrown in my way, making me make the wrong turn. You made me realize His Word IS true, from the first word to the last and there's nothing in this world that's more true than His Word!

It's not [compromising Christians like] Karl Giberson who lead me back to God. Men like him would only make me run away from the church as fast as I could . . . No, it was "America’s leading science denialist" (total nonsense of course) Answers in Genesis that did! I hope my story encourages you to continue what you do, because God is using you to save lives! . . . He never left me and He will never leave me and no matter what happens, the day WILL come that I stand before Him to be judged and then I'll be found innocent because Jesus already paid the price for all my sins in my place and I can live with Him on the new Earth for all eternity with all my brothers and sisters in Christ! How awesome is that!!! I'll end with the Bible verse that's written on the stone on my mother's grave, because now I can say it too, without a shred of doubt:

He only is my rock and my salvation: He is my defense; I shall not be moved! (Psalms 62:6)

Willem’s story was an encouragement to me, and I hope it encourages you to be bold in standing for the truth of God’s Word from the very beginning. It is so important that we trust God’s Word, not man’s ideas, and that we are diligent in equipping our children to answer the skeptical questions of this age.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.